Friday 27 July 2007

The psychology of better sound

http://www.retrothing.com/2007/07/playstation-1-a.html

Reading down to the comments, there is an unattributed reference to "the $485 wood knob, yes KNOB, to reduce vibration that might be experienced with the original plastic knob." Who knows if that is true, but I can believe it...

I was recording tracks from some old DATs into my computer recently, and compared the sound of a digital transfer compared to analogue via a gold plated £10 phono lead. Of course the digital method would be preserving every bit, and the analogue way would just further degrade the audio and lose information, right? Guess which sound I preferred.

EDIT! Thanks to anonymous comment, here is the knob in question! The description is awesome. I was going to quote a sentence or two, but it's all pretty hilarious and far beyond parody.

2 comments:

analogassailant said...

Haha the $485 knob! I remember seeing it being sold online somewhere, classic!

The thing people don't seem to mention is that the human brain is hardwired to like even ordered harmonic distortion. Naturally then analogue seems to win when comparisons are made.

I would imagine there is a "sweet spot" where depending on the content there is just the right amount of EOH distortion to make people go gaga.

So there something for ya to try Chris. Add some subtle EOH distortion to a track and see if the results are more pleasing.

Anonymous said...

http://www.referenceaudiomods.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=NOB_C37_C&Category_Code=VOLUME&Product_Count=2

yep